Joy

Joy is exactly what it says. This is a show built to lift a crowd, an unabashedly warm, radiant, feel-good production that trades darkness and conflict for light. It leans into everything uplifting, the swell of a big major-key moment, the kind of music that puts a lump in your throat and a grin on your face at the same time. Woven through it are strains of some of the most joyful melodies ever written, familiar threads of celebration and gratitude that the ear catches and holds onto.

It's the show you program when you want to send an audience home feeling good. Emotionally direct and instantly accessible, it gives an ensemble a genuine feel-good centerpiece, and it rewards a program that wants to move a stadium with sincerity rather than spectacle.

The music:

• Olympiada (Samuel Hazo)
• Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)
• Joy (Joseph Curiale)

Permissions to arrange are required for the Hazo, Cohen, and Curiale selections. The show also weaves in public-domain joyful melodies, including strains of Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring and Beethoven's Ode to Joy.